


Kingdom by the Sea

by failsafe



Series: Not Very Drastically Far: a series of snippets about where Clint and Natasha might have gone [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Bedsharing, Collection: Purimgifts Day 3, F/M, Friendship, Partnership, Pillow Talk, Romance, post-sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-22
Updated: 2013-02-22
Packaged: 2017-12-03 05:54:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/694908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/pseuds/failsafe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part Three (of Three) of a series of snippets for Jain about where Clint and Natasha ended up following The Avengers film when the Avengers dispersed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kingdom by the Sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jain/gifts).



> Title and poetry references are from [Annabel Lee](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174151) by Edgar Allen Poe.

They had made it to the ocean then—somewhere far away and not remotely close to Tony Stark's place. 

“No, I'm serious. Tell me,” he tried to insist, lying on his back with a stretched out, casually offered arm, the way he always did.

Natasha eyed Clint's arm before she ever moved back down to take him up on the offer of simply lying beside him, the way she usually did. For some reason, she'd never liked staying undressed after—with him. It wasn't a discomfort thing, though. She figured that much was clear when it was his strange reddish-purple shirt she reached for, tugging it down over her head and smoothing it down as far as it would go over her hips before she loosely bunched and tied it a bit high on the back of her head with a black elastic band.

“Tell me,” Clint did insist a little more, grinning like an idiot as he reached out and poked lightly at her side with a fingertip, always hoping she might turn ticklish.

“I don't know,” Natasha replied shortly, but she returned his stupid smile. Looking at him, she was pretty sure he was all there again. If there was anyone for whom sex would chase the monster's out of their head, it was him. She let herself fall back down against his arm, tugging against the tangle of sheets and keeping close enough to enjoy the way his body heat radiated onto them and made them warm against the air-conditioned cool of the room. She promptly forgot whatever he'd been trying to interrogate from her, and he apparently did too. He'd instead become enthralled with tracing along her scalp and toying with a loose strand of her hair that was too short to stay tied back.

“I and my Annabel Lee,” Clint mumbled, and that was enough to prompt Natasha to sit up again, leaning her weight fully against one arm as she rounded on him. She gave him the same brow-furrowed expression she always gave him when he referenced something she would have absolutely no reason or point of reference to know.

“What?”

“I don't know. T's-a poem or something,” he muttered, embarrassed.

“I make Clint Barton quote poetry,” Natasha said flatly, glancing off and widening her eyes a bit because if that _was_ true, she had gotten a whole lot further away from Clint simply making a different call about her, for whatever reason, than she had thus far anticipated.

“Like I said, I don't know,” Clint said, sitting up while she was not weighing down against his arm and reaching over to his arbitrarily chosen side of the bed, taking up a dark brown bottle of cheap American beer he actually enjoyed, taking a leisurely sip of it. While his back was turned, Natasha curled her knees to her chest and moved so she was facing his body, studying the lean muscle in his back and the tension she thought ought not remain. She reached out, fingers tracing from one sparse, faint freckle to another. Clint took another sip and she felt the subtle movement of his body as he swallowed easily as she touched him now. “What're you doing here, Tasha?” he asked.

“... Don't you want me here?” she asked, pulling her hand back and glancing down at her nails, frowning a bit.

“'Course I do. But you kept on askin' me where we were going. But here you are.”

“Here I am.”

“Yeah, so why'd you come with me when I got on the idea of co-opting a SHIELD car and taking it on a roadtrip.”

“The world's different than it was a month ago.”

“Not really. New-different but it's always new-different. Always the same.”

“I'm just wiping out my red. That's no different,” Natasha offered, reaching out when Clint had turned back around and brushing her thumb along his cheekbone. He reached up quickly and caught her hand, though, steadying it as he met her eyes.

“You know you don't owe me a thing?” he tried to insist again. He wasn't very good at insisting with her, she had realized a long time ago. It always sounded more like asking.

Natasha thought about arguing for a long, long moment. She didn't.

“You know, you've got a way of making me feel like a kid—a child,” she offered solemnly instead. He wouldn't know what she meant, and that was probably good, because she did, but she didn't. She didn't want to really think about it too much.

“Sorry,” he said. And she'd known he'd take it that way. He was actively afraid of making her think he was being condescending, and she knew it.

“No—no, it's good, I think.”

 

 

* * *


End file.
